{"id":3049,"date":"2012-02-26T12:38:39","date_gmt":"2012-02-26T17:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/?p=3049"},"modified":"2012-02-26T12:38:39","modified_gmt":"2012-02-26T17:38:39","slug":"giving-up-disbelief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/02\/giving-up-disbelief.html","title":{"rendered":"giving up disbelief ~"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I usually try to keep Lent in some fashion. It’s a wonderful practice, to offer up a piece of your everyday life for good. To think of your everyday life as a kind of, well, prayer.<\/p>\n

As a Buddhist, I don’t know that I ‘pray,’ in the Christian definition of prayer. I don’t believe in a personal deity who pays attention to my individual pleas, although I certainly make them :). (The old pagan in me, however, does believe that there are spirits who can be…propitiated :))<\/p>\n

What I do believe is what the Quakers say: I will hold you in the light<\/em>. It’s a lovely thought: that when you need my prayers, my strength, I have two strategies I can offer: tonglen<\/em> <\/a>— where I use my own pain to help assuage yours, and healing light. No definition of divinity, or the who\/what\/where of that light — just its warmth and healing. Very Quaker — like silence that wraps us and helps us hear that inner voice…<\/p>\n

A friend does a prison ministry in Oklahoma. She’s an amazing person, about as big as a minute, unless you look at her heart, which may well be bigger than Texas… So when Charissa sent out a request for people to pray for prisoners during Lent, because I love Charissa, I asked if non-Christians could do this. If there were non-Christians who might even be glad to have a non-Christian ally. She sent me a dozen names — all women. And acted glad I’d offered.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma has the highest per capita incarceration of women\"\"<\/a> in the world. Yup — the WORLD<\/a>. The US, w\/ 743 PEOPLE per 100,000<\/a>, (male & female, ranked tops (bottom?) internationally in 2009. Oklahoma’s female incarceration rate went up 832% between 1997 & 2007, compared to half that rate of ‘growth’ for male prisoners. There’s obviously something very wrong in Oklahoma.<\/p>\n

I mention these stats to point out that holding that many women in the light is no small thing. And Charissa’s project is badly needed. I don’t know if prayer — or the Buddhist & Quaker equivalent — works. But for this next month, I’m giving up disbelief. I’m going to do all I can to hold these 12 women in love & light. I’m going to try to hold their children and families in the light. I am going to s-t-r-e-t-c-h my belief and my heart and fill it w\/ 12 names and light.<\/p>\n

And I’m going to pray like hell one person can make a difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I usually try to keep Lent in some fashion. It’s a wonderful practice, to offer up a piece of your everyday life for good. To think of your everyday life as a kind of, well, prayer. As a Buddhist, I don’t know that I ‘pray,’ in the Christian definition of prayer. I don’t believe in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":398,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[296,113,295,109],"tags":[11,1181,1187,262,297,1198,298],"class_list":["post-3049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lent","category-metta","category-prayer","category-quakerism","tag-beginners-heart","tag-britton-gildersleeve","tag-buddhism","tag-buddhist-blogs","tag-buddhists-lent","tag-mindfulness","tag-women-in-prison"],"yoast_head":"\ngiving up disbelief ~ - Beginner's Heart<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I usually try to keep Lent in some fashion. It's a wonderful practice, to offer up a piece of your everyday life for good. To think of your everyday life\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/02\/giving-up-disbelief.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"giving up disbelief ~ - Beginner's Heart\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I usually try to keep Lent in some fashion. It's a wonderful practice, to offer up a piece of your everyday life for good. To think of your everyday life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/02\/giving-up-disbelief.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beginner's Heart\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-02-26T17:38:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/files\/2012\/02\/prison-bars.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Britton Gildersleeve\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"giving up disbelief ~ - Beginner's Heart","description":"I usually try to keep Lent in some fashion. It's a wonderful practice, to offer up a piece of your everyday life for good. To think of your everyday life","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/02\/giving-up-disbelief.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"giving up disbelief ~ - Beginner's Heart","og_description":"I usually try to keep Lent in some fashion. It's a wonderful practice, to offer up a piece of your everyday life for good. To think of your everyday life","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/02\/giving-up-disbelief.html","og_site_name":"Beginner's Heart","article_published_time":"2012-02-26T17:38:39+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/files\/2012\/02\/prison-bars.jpg"}],"author":"Britton Gildersleeve","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/02\/giving-up-disbelief.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/02\/giving-up-disbelief.html","name":"giving up disbelief ~ - Beginner's Heart","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/02\/giving-up-disbelief.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/02\/giving-up-disbelief.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/files\/2012\/02\/prison-bars.jpg","datePublished":"2012-02-26T17:38:39+00:00","dateModified":"2012-02-26T17:38:39+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/#\/schema\/person\/b4348bfbe2223c0ec325db830aa95f52"},"description":"I usually try to keep Lent in some fashion. It's a wonderful practice, to offer up a piece of your everyday life for good. To think of your everyday life","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/02\/giving-up-disbelief.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/02\/giving-up-disbelief.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/02\/giving-up-disbelief.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/files\/2012\/02\/prison-bars.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/files\/2012\/02\/prison-bars.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/02\/giving-up-disbelief.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"giving up disbelief ~"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/","name":"Beginner's Heart","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Britton Gildersleeve","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/#\/schema\/person\/b4348bfbe2223c0ec325db830aa95f52","name":"Britton Gildersleeve","description":"Britton Gildersleeve is a 'third culture kid.' Years spent living on the margins - in places with exotic names and food shortages - have left her with a visceral response to folks \u2018without,\u2019 as well as a desire to live her Buddhism in an engaged fashion. She\u2019s a writer and a teacher, the former director of a federal non-profit for teachers who write. She believes that if we talk to each other, we can learn to love each other (but she's still learning how). And she believes in tea. She is (still) working on her beginner's heart ~","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/author\/brittongildersleeve"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/398"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3049"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3059,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049\/revisions\/3059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}